Caught in the crossfire of the powerful California Democrat’s fight with the nation’s most recognized intelligence agency: America’s ability to manage multiple geopolitical hotspots, top national security nominations and senior Senate and CIA officials who could lose their jobs or possibly even end up in jail.

Managing relations between Congress and the intelligence community is always tricky — an outgrowth of closed-door oversight into sensitive national security issues where lawmakers often complain that they must ask the right questions to get the right answers.

But now that the Justice Department is involved in the dispute between Feinstein’s Intelligence Committee staff and the CIA — deciphering whether the CIA violated the Constitution or federal law by searching Senate computers, or whether Democratic staffers hacked into the CIA’s system to obtain classified documents — things have escalated to an unprecedented level.

While President Barack Obama won’t take sides publicly for fear of interfering with a possible criminal matter, that hasn’t stopped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Nevada Democrat last week defended Feinstein, warning in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that the recent back-and-forth accusations she’s had with CIA Director John Brennan could have historic ramifications for constitutional separation of powers.

“Left unchallenged, they call into question Congress’s ability to carry out its core constitutional duties and risk the possibility of an unaccountable Intelligence Community run amok,” Reid wrote.

When the usually feckless Harry Reid wakes up it is time for all of us to pay attention.